IT took Tamara about ten minutes to change, and by the time she returned, Ginny had White Lion ready in the yard. In the classical costume Tamara was certainly an impressive sight. She wore tapering white trousers, strapped under black jodhpur boots, a white stock, scarlet jacket with long tails, white gloves, and a top hat, under which her curly black hair was neatly confined by a net. Lion whickered to her, and Ginny held the offside stirrup while she mounted.
“Can I watch?” she asked hopefully.
Tamara glanced down from sorting the double reins and straightening Lion’s wind-blown mane, and nodded. “You’d better go into the balcony with the others,” she said.
Ginny thanked her joyfully, and raced away. She had just time to edge her way to the balcony rail before the doors were rolled back by Bates, and Lion entered at a trot, breaking into a slow canter down the long side of the school. Tamara sat very still in her dark saddle, her muscular legs in the white trousers close to her horse’s sides, her hands light and still on the reins. They rounded the corner at the far end of the school, and Tamara turned the stallion up the centre at A, still at the slow hand canter—so slow and collected that he scarcely seemed to move. At X they halted, and Tamara bowed to her audience in the balcony. She had become utterly serious and withdrawn, her shattered, weather-beaten face giving her an odd dignity and a look of dedication as she sent Lion forward once more into his slow canter.
Down the long side of the school they came back to a collected trot, round the far end at the same pace, and then a change of rein across the school at a wonderful extended trot, so smooth and swift that Lion seemed to glide, his great white crest arched, his ears pricked, his white forelegs flashing out in front of him, his long, stocky body driven forward by the immense power in his hocks and the strength of Tamara’s legs against him. Back again to a collected trot past the balcony, and they repeated the movement across the school in the other direction. Then, from a collected trot again, they changed to the passage—that wonderful, elevated, hesitating trot at which Gambler, by comparison, was a very poor amateur. Halfway down the long side Tamara turned her horse across the school, slowing him until they paused directly beneath X, Lion marking time in a brilliantly elevated piaffe which brought a spontaneous burst of applause from their audience.
Tamara smiled slightly, and they moved forward into a passage, turning again down the long side of the school away from the balcony, and coming back to an ordinary trot. Half and full passes across the school at a trot and canter followed, and then two slow cantering changes of rein, with Lion performing a flying change of leg at every second stride, and then repeating the movement at every stride, Tamara’s scarlet coat-tails lifting and falling in time to each swinging step, and the stallion’s coarse white tail flying out behind him. Round the far end of the school again at a collected canter, and Tamara turned him across once more to X, slower and slower, until, directly beneath the hanging, black-and-white letter the stallion turned in a slow, graceful pirouette on his hocks, never losing the perfect rhythm of his cantering strides, his white tail sweeping the tan, his neck arched and mane flying as his graceful forelegs made the smooth circle around him. Ginny was breathless and transported, oblivious of her surroundings and the other spellbound onlookers. This was indeed poetry, the exotic, intricate poetry that she had earlier known was not applicable to the basic art of dressage with its simpler beauty. To be able to ride like that, to become part of such poetry, was worth anything, she decided, worth any amount of grinding work and heart-breaking struggle, and she knew that to strive towards that end was to be her destiny.
Tamara was rounding the school once more at a passage, turning up the middle at A, and coming for the last time to X, with White Lion marking time in another brilliant piaffe, his white ears flirting backwards and forwards, his nose in and his crest arched, his long, white, rippling mane and Tamara’s scarlet coat-tails lifting and falling with the rhythm of the powerful, elevated movement, and a crash of applause burst from the delighted audience in the balcony.
“Wonderful, Tamara,” shouted Sue. “That was worth the box.”
“Miss Blake is very good,” said a quiet voice next to Ginny, and she looked round to find Andras Jokai beside her, with a miserable-looking Shirley at his side.
“I thought they were wonderful.” Ginny’s voice vibrated with enthusiasm. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You do not often see her ride?” asked Andras.
“No. I’ve never seen her on Lion before,” Ginny told him. “I’ve always been too busy when she’s exercised him.”
“I see.” Andras looked down at Tamara and the white stallion, who were waiting for Bates to open the doors. “Yes, she is good. I have seen few better. And how she loves it!”
Ginny looked at him in surprise. How on earth could he have learned that just from watching Tamara’s absorbed face for a few minutes? Now people were starting to leave the balcony, going down the short flight of wooden steps into the yard, and Ginny realized that she should have been out there first to take Lion from Tamara and settle him in his box. She turned to hurry down, and Andras, followed by the still silent Shirley, accompanied her. Out in the yard people had gathered round Tamara and her stallion to congratulate her, and to look at Lion. Ginny, seeing her employer’s unusually happy face and her arm laid in a possessive caress across her horse’s white neck, knew that she was not needed for the moment. Andras, too, was gazing at Tamara’s shattered, smiling face. She had removed her hat, and her thick, curly hair was escaping from the tight net. Suddenly she was almost pretty, and Ginny realized again how nice-looking she must have been before the accident. Then Andras touched her arm.
“We must go now,” he told her. “Will you give Miss Blake our thanks for a pleasant and interesting day?”
“I’ll remember,” promised Ginny. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye. Perhaps the next time we come here you, too, will be competing,” said Andras.
Then he and Shirley were walking away towards the field and their parked box, and from the centre of the laughing, animated group around Lion, Tamara called, “Ginny, take over, will you?” and Ginny made her way through the crowd to take the stallion’s reins. Tamara led the others away down the drive, leaving the yard suddenly deserted. Obviously she was taking them in to her flat for tea, and Ginny felt rather hurt at being left out. She supposed that she could not really expect to be treated as one of Tamara’s close friends, but from what she had seen and heard of the girl until now she had not thought that Tamara had any, and she had been inclined to feel sorry for her in consequence. Now, obscurely, she felt cheated, for it seemed that Tamara had no need of her sympathy.
Ginny stabled White Lion, helped Bates to feed round, and then began to clean the stallion’s tack in the warm tack-room. Outside it was dusk—a grey, damp, sweet-scented spring dusk—and the horses munched contentedly in their stables. Bates was sweeping the concrete walk which ran along the front of the buildings, and in the field a few boxes still waited, dark and shapeless in the fading light. Tamara and her friends were a long time. Ginny finished the tack, and she was filling hay nets in the summer scented feed-store when she heard them coming back, their feet crunching on the gravel, their voices and laughter loud on the still evening air, secure and unselfconscious in their comradeship. Just beyond the barn they paused at the field gate to say goodnight before parting to find their various forms of transport. They were discussing future fixtures. Sue was asking someone called Jennifer if she was going to the hunt ball, and someone else was planning a shopping day and spree in London.
“I’ve got to go up in any case to collect that new saddle,” she was saying. “Sandy and Merle are coming with me. I’ve one ticket left for the theatre. Any offers? How about you, John?”
“Sorry, I’m hunting that day,” replied the thin boy who had won the combined training. “What about Tamara?”
“Oh, Tamara doesn’t want to come.” There was a sharp note of irritation in the girl’s voice. “Sue, you’ll come. Go on now: no excuses. A day out in town’s just the thing for us horsey types.”
“All right, I’ll come,” agreed Sue. “’Bye, Tamara. Thanks for the do, and for the tea. See you some time.”
“Goodbye. Thank you for coming.” Tamara’s voice sounded suddenly hard, and Ginny wondered if she would really have liked the trip to London.
Then the visitors were walking away down the field, round the back of the feed barn, and Ginny heard the car owner say, sotto voce, “You really are a clot, John. You very nearly let us in for a day with our sweet and lovely hostess. We want to enjoy ourselves.”
“Sorry.” John’s languid drawl was half amused, half serious. “I know she’s a bit of a bore: but one can’t help feeling sorry for her sometimes. You were being rather obvious about not wanting her.”
“Chivalry,” exclaimed Sue. “I’d never have suspected you of suffering from it, John. Anyway, I don’t suppose she wanted to come. She hardly ever stirs out of this hole unless it’s to go on a film or trail that old palomino round the music-halls. Gosh! look at the time. I must fly, I’m going out to dinner. ’Bye, everyone.”
There was a chorus of “Goodbyes”, fading now as they went out of range of the barn, and Ginny went quietly to the door. Tamara was standing a few feet away, gazing across the yard towards the tack-room, her face set like roughened stone, but her eyes were dark with pain, and Ginny knew that she had heard. Then Ginny’s slight movement caught her eye, and she swung round.
“What are you skulking there for?” she demanded. “Aren’t those hay nets filled yet? Are you completely incapable of getting your work done by a reasonable hour?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Blake”—this was no time to call her ‘Tamara’—“I’ve almost finished them.”
“Then hurry up,” ordered Tamara, and walked off across the yard.
She had known perfectly well that they did not want her. John was a fool to make an issue out of it, when it only bore out her long-standing belief, so often proved, that people only wanted to know her for what she could give them. But the proof, when it came, still had the power to hurt, the proof that she was not wanted, and that apart from her riding she was never wanted. And her riding was somehow a static gift, as she lacked the ability to pass on her knowledge to others, and as she was rarely given the opportunity to use her brilliance to train other people’s horses. That this was partly her fault did not cross her mind. She never considered advertising or attending shows which would get her name known, she was too absorbed in her long-standing conviction that no one anywhere really wanted her. And now there was no longer any pleasure left in her day: even the memory of White Lion’s performance was soured for her, and for the rest of the evening she remained in a mood so black that Ginny retired early to bed and left her alone. Somehow, she decided, she must get Bates to tell her more about Tamara, for surely there was something behind her odd manner and moods—something must have made her like she was. If she knew, thought Ginny, perhaps she might even be able to help, for she liked Tamara and admired her riding, and she sensed that she was not happy.
Her opportunity for questioning Bates came during the next week. Tamara went away filming for three days, taking with her both palominos and Count. As only one harness horse was booked, Countess stayed at home, and between them Ginny and Bates ran the stable with little difficulty. On the afternoon of Tamara’s first day away they were cleaning tack when Ginny carefully brought up the subject of Tamara’s past, by asking Bates if they had always cleaned tack every day in London.
“Oh yes,” Bates assured her. “There was a real rumpus if any was missed. The horses from Blakes were the best turned out in Hyde Park, even if some of them were a bit dodgy to ride.”
“Did Miss Blake do much dressage then?” Ginny asked him.
“A fair bit,” replied Bates. “Old Blake soon noticed she’d got a leaning for it, and he had her teach most of the horses he had a few movements—made ’em better for the films as well as putting a bigger price on them when he wanted to sell.”
“He was very strict, wasn’t he?” pressed Ginny, polishing Cayenne’s stirrup irons.
“He was that,” agreed Bates. “Miss Tamara got the worst of him. She used to spend a lot of her time with me and my missus—could get away from him for a bit that way. He was a proper brute: used to knock her about; and she was always treated like the stable-girl. She was never allowed to make any proper friends either, Blake used to break it up as soon as he heard about them, used to convince her they only wanted to get free rides or something from her. Then, when she got engaged, there was real trouble. They tried to keep it a secret, were going to wait until she was twenty-one—she was eighteen at the time. The boy—Phil, his name was—worked at one of the garages in the mews. Of course, the old man did find out the very morning he and Miss Tamara were going off on a film. There was a right old row that morning.”
“What happened?” Ginny was breathless, the stirrup irons forgotten.
“Well, Miss Tamara finished by saying she wasn’t going to stop at home any longer and he could do what he liked about it,” went on Bates. “That shook her father. He’d always been scared he’d lose her, and she was too useful for him to let that happen. That was why he’d never let her have any friends. He begged her to go on the film with him then, said he’d think about it while they were away, and promised to treat her different if she’d stay. She gave in—real soft-hearted she used to be then: that was why she stopped with him so long—and they went off on this film. They had to make a scene with a run-away carriage; something went wrong, a wheel came off, and they overturned. Old Blake was killed, and Miss Tamara was smashed up; you know what it did to her face. I don’t think it seemed so bad to her at the time—not in a way. Least, she was free to get married and live her own life. But Phil wasn’t so keen to marry her any longer—not now she wasn’t so pretty any more. That just about broke her heart. She sold up in London, came down here, and tried to forget everything but horses. My missus died that year, and I came down then to work for her. That was nearly five years ago now, but Miss Tamara’s never got over it. She hasn’t trusted anyone since—always thinks they want to be friendly for what they can get out of it, not because they like her.”
“Poor Miss Blake!” Ginny was wide-eyed with sympathy. So that was the explanation of Tamara. “Couldn’t plastic surgery help?”
“They tried, but it was going to take a long time, and when Phil broke their engagement she said she couldn’t be bothered with it,” explained Bates. “Wouldn’t leave the horses to go in hospital for the treatments.”
After this conversation Ginny felt that she certainly could understand Tamara better now. But it did not seem that there was anything she could do to help, except try to prove that her own liking for Tamara was not based on any ulterior motive.
Before Tamara’s return two days later Ginny took one novice lesson in the school, feeling a dreadful fraud at doing so, but succeeding well enough, for the corrections were obvious—elementary ones such as ‘Toes up’, ‘Knees in’, ‘Hands down’, etc.—and she took two people out for a hack, mounting them, with Bates’s advice, on Mosaic and Variety, and riding Gaylord, who needed exercise, herself. Tamara was back on the Thursday, and Ginny was given the Friday off, as a day was due to her, on the system of one half-day a week and one whole day a month. Tamara said little about her days away, but Ginny got the impression that she had not enjoyed them much. Golden Prize had run up very light, there were poverty marks in his quarters, and his eyes looked wild, and Gambler had a cut on his hock where he had caught himself on some scenery. Bates told Ginny that filming always upset Prize, and on the Friday Tamara turned him out for a few hours, with Variety for company, in the little paddock beyond the schooling field.
Ginny, who seldom felt the need for a change from horses, spent the morning of her day off doing some necessary washing and mending, and in the afternoon she decided to take Flash for a long ride. It was a mild, damp day, with a lot of fast-moving cloud running ahead of a strong south-west wind—the sort of day that Ginny’s books had told her was perfect for hunting. It also seemed very good for hacking. Flash seemed fresh: he was immensely better these days, gay and alert, his smooth, dark bay coat shining, and his eyes bright. He walked down the long drive with a spring in his step, snorting at imaginary spooks in the hedges, and shying at the gate-posts. Once on the road he settled down a little, and Ginny let him walk out on a fairly long rein, turning off the main road as soon as possible into a quiet, winding lane which would bring her eventually to Hampton Manor, a beautiful, fourteenth-century stone manor house, now the property of the National Trust, who kept it open to the public and who rented part of its parkland to local farmers. There were several bridlepaths through it, and the broad grass rides between the famous avenues of lime-trees provided wonderful gallops. Flash seemed unusually excited: he began to jog and shy again as they drew nearer to the park, his long, still thin neck arched, his wispy black mane fluttering on the breeze. Ginny was enjoying herself; it was fun to have a keen, happy horse beneath her on a day like this, especially when the horse, for a few months at least, was hers. Flash’s mouth was kind to the feel of her hands on one of Tamara’s snaffle bridles, and his lean, mahogany-coloured ears were pricked eagerly forward, his dark nostrils wide blown as he snorted at the warm wind. They turned into the park through a gate in the iron fencing, and Ginny felt Flash’s back go suddenly tense under the saddle, and wondered if she was shortly to be bucked off. They went through the narrow belt of beech trees into a muddy path which ran between fences which divided two big fields, and Ginny told Flash to trot on, which he did with a bound, and at the same moment she heard what her horse had been hearing for some time: the not-too-distant note of a horn, and the sudden ringing cry of hounds.
Flash leaped forward at the sound, almost getting away from her, his body stiff with excitement, his tail carried banner-like above his back. Ginny did not know what to do. If she went on she would probably run straight into them, but if she turned back it would take the rest of the ride to calm Flash down, and in any case it was more than she could bear to do, to turn her back on her first ever glimpse of hounds. She went on.
They trotted fast down the path, Flash pulling hard as the noises grew louder, hounds’ voices changing suddenly from a few disjointed cries to a sudden crescendo of excitement, and it was at that moment that Ginny saw the single scarlet-clad rider on the black horse on the hillside to her right, sitting motionless at the edge of a thick copse. Flash had seen him as well, and he plunged forward into a canter, just as a stealthy, red-brown shape slipped out of the shadows of the wood, paused for a moment, and then came down the hill towards the path as swiftly as a flying bird. Ginny had read enough of hunting to swing Flash round and make him stand well clear of the fox’s chosen path, so that there was no danger of heading him, and the fox slipped across the track like a swift brown shadow, while from above the whipper-in’s holloa came loud and stirring down the hill.
The fox was into the next field, following the line of a low bank across it towards the Manor, and from the copse came the thrilling, strident notes of the ‘Gone away’, as hounds burst from the covert in a flood of brown and tan, and their music came crashing down to Ginny on a wild wave of sound that made her blood race and sent Flash up on to his hind legs. The pack came through the fence and across the track in a flood of colour, eyes shining and tongues lolling, with waving sterns and hard, padding feet. The huntsman was coming down the hillside after them, riding well forward on his cobby brown, the horn still against his lips, and the field swept into sight round the corner of the copse, only a handful of them, the cream of the first flight, in full hunting kit on big, well-bred horses. The huntsman slowed his brown to a trot, and rode him at the iron fence on to the track. The wise old cob jumped slowly, right off his hocks, landing sideways in the narrow space, and the huntsman—a dark, strong-faced man of indeterminate age—asked, “Did you see him, Miss?”
“Yes, he was following the bank,” Ginny told him.
“Thank you.”
The man turned his horse, and the brown leaped from a standstill, clearing the fence by inches, and landing heavily on all four feet at once before galloping on across the field in the wake of hounds. Before Ginny knew what was happening there was a tremendous, unseating, and unexpected heave beneath her, a back-breaking jar, and she was galloping at full speed in pursuit of the huntsman, sitting somewhere on Flash’s neck, with the stirrups banging his sides and the reins flying loose somewhere about his ears.
Somehow she regained her seat and her stirrups, and collected the reins. The huntsman was only a few yards in front of her, intent on the racing pack ahead, his horse galloping easily on an almost loose rein. There was a distant thunder of hooves behind them, and Ginny risked a quick glance back. Only two other people had successfully negotiated the double railings: one the whipper-in on the black, the other a man who looked vaguely familiar, riding a big dark-brown horse. They were approaching Hampton Manor by now, and Ginny’s attention returned to her horse.
Hounds were swinging aside to skirt the house, crossing a corner of the wide lawn, and the huntsman sent his horse at the five-barred gate out on to the gravelled drive. Wondering if Flash could possibly do it, but knowing that she had little hope of stopping him, Ginny grabbed a handful of mane and hoped for the best. Flash took it like a steeplechaser, his head high and heels trailing, so that they clicked over the top bar, but he was never in danger of hitting it properly, and Ginny felt very safe in the saddle as he turned sharply to follow the huntsman’s horse up the drive.
The brown cob vanished down a path through some shrubbery, and Flash dived after him. Behind her Ginny heard the thud and scatter of gravel, which meant that the others were still close behind, and then she was steadying Flash frantically to follow the huntsman over an unexpected stile into a small, rough paddock behind the kitchen garden. Flash flew it again, jumping flat with his back hollowed, and Ginny lost a stirrup, but she was still safely on board as they came out into the open, past a staring farm hand on a tractor, who stared even harder at the sight of Ginny’s jeans and red, hatless head among so much scarlet and black and white. Across the corner of the paddock Ginny was horrified to see the huntsman hunch his shoulders and lower his head as his horse took him through a thick black bullfinch [overgrown thorn hedge]. She could not possibly stop, although the thought of going through tall blackthorn in jeans and with a bare head was not attractive. She grabbed a large handful of mane, followed the example of the huntsman’s hunched shoulders, ducked her head, and closed her eyes as Flash took off. The thorns grabbed her like clutching hands, ripping through her thin jeans and tearing the skin of her legs, catching in her short hair, and jabbing her forehead and scalp. Then, somehow, they were through, there was open grassland ahead, and she was still in the saddle. A beam of pure delight spreading over her white face, Ginny settled down to ride.
They left the park over another low stile on to a grass verge, swinging, Ginny was glad to notice, in the general direction of Hampton Stables, followed the lane for perhaps a hundred yards, and jumped out over a broad ditch and a low cut-and-laid hedge into unsown plough. Flash went up the furrows like a cat, his ears pushed eagerly forward after the flying hounds, through a muddy gateway at the top, and round the headland of a field sown with young oats. Two sheep-hurdles in a gap took them on to grass once more, and a herd of excited bullocks tore bucking across the field beside them, swinging away where hounds had checked briefly in a corner. But they found the line again almost at once, and were through the hedge and hunting on more slowly across sonic sheep grazing. The huntsman jumped the hedge, signalling to the others to hold hard, and Ginny had to turn Flash round and ride him back a little way to prevent him from taking her over. Then a quick note on the horn told them that hounds were running on once more, and Ginny and the young whip jumped the hedge together, ignoring the strand of wire which ran through it, although Flash’s trailing heels only just missed it. They were followed by the man on the brown, who then came up beside Ginny, who recognized him immediately. It was Andras Jokai on a magnificent brown blood horse that she had never seen before.
“Where did you join us?” he asked, as they galloped side by side across the field.
“In the park,” Ginny shouted back. “I couldn’t help it; Flash just took charge.”
“I do not blame him,” said Andras. “This is a fine run.”
They jumped a broken gate into the next field, crossing a series of rough furrows a little more slowly, and jumped out over an untidy gap in a wired-up hedge. Flash was still trailing his heels, but Ginny’s confidence in him was growing at every stride and every fence, for he seemed to know when not to treat a jump too lightly, and he was extremely comfortable and quick on his feet for an almost totally unschooled horse. His neck was dark now with sweat, lather beginning to cream off on to the reins, but he was still pulling, and he showed no signs of tiring. Ahead hounds were running on fast, their cry coming clear on the wind, but the huntsman had stopped at a point where two high hedges formed a corner. There were some rails there, but obviously the cob had refused. Then Ginny, Andras, and the whip came up to him, and saw why. The rails were set on the top of a steep, slippery bank down into a sunken lane, which the winter had turned to a shallow, marshy stream in which grew reeds and clumps of coarse grass. On the other side another bank was topped by an impenetrable hedge, but farther down there was a gate which would offer a way out, if anyone could once get in.
“It’s a nasty place,” the huntsman told them. “Jim, have a go at it. Slowly, mind.”
The young whip rode his black at the rails at a trot. It refused at the last moment, sliding into them, and landing on its hocks before swinging away. The boy let it have a look, and then tried again, riding much harder, with spurs and crop both in use, but with no more success.
“Horse always was a coward,” remarked the huntsman. “There’s no other way but the road.”
“They’re running on, too.” The whip was listening to the fading cry beyond the lane. “We’ll lose them, Stan.”
“May I try?” asked Andras.
“And welcome, sir,” the huntsman told him. “If just one of us can get to them before they go away altogether it’ll be something. I’ll try to take your lead.”
Andras turned his horse, gave himself a short run, and rode at the fence at a slow canter. There was no visible force in his riding: only a close observer such as those three by the rails would have noticed the steely strength in his booted legs against the brown horse’s flanks, the drive of his braced back, the sensitivity of his hands, as he gave and yet urged through the light contact he had with the soft mouth, and the utter determination that filled him. The brown horse never hesitated. He lowered his head for a second to examine the take-off, and then jumped slowly and carefully, right off his hocks, his ears half pricked. He landed halfway down the bank, perfectly balanced, his hocks under him and forelegs braced as he slid the rest of the way down, landing with a squelching splash in the wet lane below. The huntsman rode his horse hard at the rails after him, but the cob was tiring—he had been out since morning, and his legs had received several knocks during the day. Not even Andras’s example and the fading cry of his beloved hounds could persuade him to try, and the huntsman turned away.
“Come on, Jim,” he said. “That black coward of yours won’t have it now. We’ll have to go round by the road. You coming, Miss?”
“I …” began Ginny; but they were not waiting for her reply. For a moment Ginny hesitated uncertainly as the two horses cantered away from her across the field, back towards the gap through which they had entered it. The splashing sound of Andras’s horse’s hooves had stopped—obviously he had left the lane again—and Flash was growing excited. He had seen the big brown jump the rails, and he could still hear hounds in the distance. He had no more wish than Ginny to turn his back on them and go tamely round by the road. His eagerness decided his rider. After all, she told herself, I can only die once, and he might just as easily fall under a lorry on the road. Turning him round, and taking a firm hold of his mane, she rode him at the rails.
For a moment Ginny thought that he was going to refuse, and she drove her heels into him desperately. Flash hesitated no longer. He jumped, leaping right out, determined not to land on that treacherous-looking bank, and Ginny felt him going down beneath her like a lift, her feet left the stirrups, and her knees were coming up over the top of her saddle. Then, with a tremendous jar, Flash landed on all four feet at once amid clouds of spray and fountains of mud. He tried to take a step forward to balance himself, found his feet stuck, and landed on nose and knees in the middle of the lane. Ginny went off over his head, landing on her face in the reeds and mud at the foot of the opposite bank, and scrambled to her feet blowing mud out of her nose and mouth and wiping her eyes. Flash, too, was on his feet again, only a little less muddy than she was; but there was no time to worry about that. Ginny grabbed Flash’s reins and scrambled into the saddle, sending him plunging down the lane towards the sagging gate into the next field. Here the bank had been cut down to form a pathway, and the low jump was easy after what had gone before. In a few seconds they were over and galloping across open meadowland in pursuit of Andras’s distant figure and the bright flicker of the racing pack. Flash’s reaching strides were thunder on the firm ground, and Ginny’s heart soared with the wonderful exhilaration of the moment.
She caught up with Andras two fields farther on, where he was struggling with a wired-up gate in a barbed-wire fence. He looked at her with amazement and sudden amusement.
“How did you get here?” he demanded.
“I followed you,” Ginny told him, dropping to the ground to help him with the gate. “Flash was marvellous. We weren’t quite so tidy about it as you, but we’re here.”
“So I see,” smiled Andras. “May I offer you my congratulations? You are a very bold pair. But come, we shall lose them again.”
The gate was open by now, the horses were hurried through, and it was hastily closed. Andras gave Ginny a strong leg-up that almost sent her off the other side, vaulted into his own saddle, and they were off once more in the wake of the flying pack.
“They will have him in a moment,” Andras shouted to her, above the scream of the wind and the thunder of their horses’ hooves. “He is no longer so fresh as he was.”
The cry of the hounds rang in Ginny’s ears with a new note of savagery in it, and she felt a sudden violent surge of pity for the distressed, terrified creature that they were hunting. Here she was, safe behind the screaming blood-lust of the pack, glorying in speed and wind and her triumph over the country and in the strength of her once-wretched horse, while violent death swept closer and closer to the heels of the tiring fox, and the pigeons rose clattering from the copse ahead where lay the longed-for sanctuary of the deep, dark earth where no hound could follow.
“Go on, go on,” she gasped, while her fingers unconsciously checked her horse, so that he dropped back a little from Andras’s side.
But they were half a field from the copse, and the fox was too tired. He was an old fox, his brush mangy and poor under its heavy coating of mud, his flanks lean from the long winter, and his greying muzzle and ears scarred from a dozen battles. They had driven him a long way since that morning, and they were young and keen and hard. Two hundred yards from the copse the fox felt the fangs snap at his brush, and from behind Ginny saw the mass of brown and tan and white flow over the running red shape, submerge it, and stop and turn with the swinging flow of an ebbing tide. The hunt was over.
Andras stopped his horse on the fringe of the snapping pack and dismounted, leaving his horse to stand while he waded into their midst. He picked up the fox, took a knife from his pocket, and skilfully removed the mask, pads, and brush before quartering the remainder and tossing it back to the eager hounds. Ginny, too, had dismounted, and was loosening her girths, while Flash watched the hounds with pricked ears and shining eyes, though his flanks were working like bellows, and sweat ran in streams down his legs and chest. Andras led his horse across to her.
“I think the master, when he arrives, will agree that this should be yours,” he told her, holding out the brush.
Ginny looked at the muddy, blood-stained thing and shuddered.
“No, thank you,” she said. “You keep it. It’s horrible.”
Andras looked first astonished, and then, looking more closely, he saw the glitter of tears on the drying mud on her face, and his thin face was suddenly sympathetic.
“It is your first kill?” he asked. Ginny nodded, and Andras said, “It is not a pretty sight. But you must remember that the fox did a great deal of damage in his life—to chickens and game, perhaps even to domestic cats and pet rabbits. Hunting is the only humane way that he and his kind can be controlled. It is also the most natural way, beast against beast, and with hunting only in winter no cubs can be left motherless, as they might with indiscriminate killing all the year round.”
“I suppose you’re right,” agreed Ginny. “But I don’t want that thing even then. I’m sorry.”
“It does not matter,” Andras assured her. “Now, let us try to collect these hounds and take them to the road from which their huntsman should arrive.”
Hacking back towards the road with hounds in front of them, Ginny asked Andras if he thought she would have harmed Flash by hunting him. Andras looked at him carefully and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He will be tired tomorrow, maybe a little stiff, but he has enjoyed it, and he does not look exhausted. He will be all right.”
They met the huntsman, the whip, and a few other people who had now caught up in a farmyard at the end of a cinder track which led to the road. One of the strangers, a grey-haired man in scarlet riding a chestnut, proved to be the master, Sir John Bury, who thanked Andras for his help and looked at Ginny in astonishment, although he had been warned about her by Stan, the huntsman. Certainly by now she was enough to startle any master at the end of a long run. She was plastered in partly dried mud, her jeans were ripped by thorns, and her windbreaker had lost one cuff. Tears from both wind and her pity for the fox cut clean streaks through the mud on her face, and her wiry hair stuck out in bright spears around her head. Her horse was still thin enough to look out of place in such good company, and his head was smothered in mud from his stumble in the lane.
“And who might you be?” Sir John inquired, trying to hide his amusement at the pair.
“Virginia Harris, sir,” Ginny told him, slightly awed. “I didn’t mean to join in, but Flash took charge in Hampton Manor park.”
“I see.” Sir John smiled at her. “Well, you seem to have beaten us all except for this young man. Stan tells me you jumped Dyke Lane.”
“Yes, we did. Flash was terribly good,” Ginny admitted, patting her horse.
“I hope you gave her the brush, sir?” Sir John told Andras.
“I—er—offered it to her,” began Andras awkwardly, but Ginny interrupted him.
“I wouldn’t take it,” she told the master. “I didn’t want to be reminded of the poor fox.”
Sir John’s eyebrows shot up, and after a moment’s startled silence he began to laugh. “Well, that’s the best thing I’ve heard this season,” he exclaimed. “Never mind, young lady, you won’t forget this run, brush or no brush, I’ll be bound.” Ginny agreed that she would not.
It was beginning to rain as they turned out of the farmyard on to the road, and dusk seemed to be approaching already with the low cloud. The huntsman had taken charge of his hounds once more, and several more riders joined them as they jogged along. They had been running for some time before Ginny had fallen in with them, and most of the horses, including Andras’s brown, seemed tired. It was someone behind him who drew his attention to a nasty over-reach on his horse’s off foreleg, and Andras dismounted to examine it. It was raining quite heavily by now, and the horses stood steaming slightly, their heads low, each resting one weary leg. Andras straightened up and patted the brown horse’s neck.
“I shall have to walk him,” he told Ginny. “It is bleeding quite badly.”
“How far have you got to go?” asked Ginny.
“Quite a long way,” replied Andras. “The meet was at Seton, and the Campbells live several miles beyond that.”
“Seton? But that’s right over by the Worthing road,” exclaimed Ginny. “Look, why not come back to Hampton with me? We aren’t far from the stables, and Tamara won’t mind.”
“It is very tempting,” said Andras. “Are you sure that Miss Blake will not think me too great a nuisance?”
“She may not seem very welcoming, but she’ll be all right,” Ginny assured him.
“Then I will gratefully accept your offer,” said Andras.
Ginny did not dismount to keep him company, as it was so wet and she did not want to get the saddle soaked. Flash ambled along beside the brown horse while she stretched her aching legs, letting them hang free of the stirrups for a few minutes, and discovering just how much her bad leg was going to ache after its treatment that day. But she was used to putting up with that, and soon she was asking Andras questions about Shirley’s progress.
“Her mother was very displeased by her low marks at your dressage meeting,” replied Andras. “Shirley told her once more that she did not enjoy competition riding of any kind, and after some argument her mother has finally decided to abandon the idea. It means, of course, that I will very soon be out of a job, but it is a happy release for Shirley. She is a nice girl, but she would never have made a rider.”
“Where will you go next?” Ginny asked him.
Andras shrugged his shoulders, and there was a sudden bleakness in his expression.
“I do not know,” he told her. “There are few people who can afford a private instructor, and it seems that all the riding-schools are fully staffed. Then I have Ambassador to think of. Not all stables will accept an instructor with his own horse.”
“I didn’t realize he was yours.” Ginny looked admiringly at the big, deep-girthed, dark-brown blood horse beside her, noticing his bold head and beautiful, sloping shoulders and the power of his big hind quarters. “Have you had him long?”
“Only about six months,” said Andras. “I suppose it was foolish to buy him, when I am so unsettled, but he was going very cheap, as he was considered vicious. He belonged to my former employers, and his ‘viciousness’ was merely his high courage rebelling against weak handling and his owner’s fear of him. I was employed to teach the son of the household, but it was really the master who needed to learn.”
“He’s a glorious horse,” Ginny told him. “You won’t have to sell him now, will you?”
“I hope not,” replied Andras. “I should not like to lose him.”
He ran a caressing hand down the brown horse’s neck, and Ginny guessed that Ambassador was rather more to him than just an unusually good horse ; they reminded her of Tamara and White Lion, or herself and Flash, and a vague idea began to grow in her quick brain. But it was much too early to mention it, and instead she asked, “Do you like teaching?”
“I like it very much,” replied Andras. “It is, as you say, my vocation.”
“Tamara doesn’t teach much.” Ginny was following her own line of thought. “I wish she did. I do need lessons so badly.”
“I understand from Shirley that she is not good as a teacher,” said Andras. “It is so with some people who are brilliant themselves. Often it is left to us less-gifted mortals to translate the basis of that brilliance into words of instruction.”
“I know,” agreed Ginny. “I’d hate to leave her, but I really don’t seem to get anywhere with her lessons.”
“You are fond of her?” asked Andras.
“Well, in a way.” Ginny found it difficult to explain her feelings about Tamara. “I think she’s a wonderful rider, and she can be awfully kind sometimes. You get sort of glimpses of the person she really is underneath, warm and gentle and generous, but on top she’s so prickly, you can’t get through to her. Bates says she’s been hurt so often by people that she won’t trust them now, and I know she isn’t happy.”
“It is very sad when life does that to a person,” said Andras quietly, and Ginny knew that he understood what she meant probably better than she did herself. She wondered again what his history was and where he came from, and she decided to ask.
“I am Hungarian,” replied Andras. “I was an officer in the cavalry there until the uprising in nineteen fifty-six: then I managed to leave the country, and eventually I arrived here, where others of my countrymen have also become riding instructors.”
Ginny remembered the Hungarian uprising. The newspapers had been full of pictures of shelled buildings and burned-out tanks, of flimsy barricades and tattered, triumphant Freedom Fighters, until the Communist army’s return had swamped them, and sudden silence had fallen on the frontiers of a brave, downtrodden country. Ginny’s parents had thought them fools for attempting such an impossible revolt, but Ginny remembered the glory of their brief triumph, and the horror of the reports of the army’s return, and she had been thrilled when Doreen had rushed home one lunch-time missing her usual meal in the canteen, to report that the boss’s son had gone off to Hungary to fight for the Freedom army, if he could get across the frontier, as several other young British boys and girls had done. She looked at Andras now with fresh admiration.
“Were you in the fighting?” she asked him breathlessly.
“Yes, I was one of those crazy ones who thought we might win,” agreed Andras. “Of course, it was impossible. On the last night most of my friends were dead: there was nothing but pride to keep me there, and that was not enough. I managed to escape from the city before the last barricades fell, and make my way to the frontier. It was not an enjoyable experience.”
He was obviously not keen to talk about it, and Ginny dropped the subject, rather wishing that she had never brought it up. Memories that to her were merely thrilling drama must be very painful to him, she realized. They were almost at the stables by now, and she was soaked, the mud, wet once more, streaming down her face and clothes in sticky rivulets. Flash quickened his pace a little as they turned into the drive, and Ambassador, now going slightly lame, hurried after him, his ears pricking at the scents of food and other horses. Tamara emerged from the tack-room as they entered the yard and stood watching their approach with her hands on her hips and the rain standing in silver beads on her dark curls in the light from the tack-room behind her.
“Don’t tell me you’ve rescued another horse from the floods,” she exclaimed, as they came into range of the lights. “Is that animal of yours still alive?”
“I met the hunt,” explained Ginny. “Flash just carted me, and we had a terrific run. Captain Jokai was out too, and his horse had an over-reach and it’s tired, so I thought he could leave it here for the night.”
“I suppose he can.” Tamara came across to them. “Bates,” she shouted. “Bring some straw. We’ve got a visitor.”
It was like the evening of her arrival over again, thought Ginny, watching the preparations for Ambassador’s comfort as she dried Flash with handfuls of clean straw. Tamara materialized out of the thick dusk to look him over and bandage his wet legs with warm stable bandages, and Ginny told her something of his wonderful performance behind hounds.
“Do you think it’s hurt him?” she finished. “Captain Jokai thinks he’ll be all right, and he didn’t seem too tired.”
“It won’t hurt him—probably do him good,” Tamara assured her. “He’s dry enough now. Put his rug on him upside down over some straw and I’ll bring him a mash. Bates has got two steaming in the tack-room.”
She went off across the yard, a tall, strong, brisk figure in a dark sweater and jeans, ignoring the driving rain, and Ginny piled straw on Flash’s loins and back and threw the rug over him with the lining on the outside. Then Tamara was back with the hot, rich-smelling bran mash, and the bay horse plunged his nose eagerly into it.
“You’d better go up to the house and get a bath,” Tamara told Ginny. “You must like mud; you’re always smothered in it. I’ll bring Captain Jokai up for some tea when he’s finished settling his horse.”
Surprised that Tamara was being so sociable, Ginny obeyed, and she was soaking in the deep hot water which came from the boiler in the main house when she heard them come in. Ten minutes later, dry and clean in her old pair of spare jeans and a green sweater, her damp hair springy from the brushing it had received, Ginny was sitting in the untidy lounge with them drinking tea and eating hot buttered toast and jam. Andras had washed and removed his wet black coat; he was dressed now in extremely muddy black boots, fawn breeches, and a white shirt and stock under a dark-red waistcoat. He looked very glamorous with his thin, handsome face and crinkly black hair, leaning back in one of Tamara’s shabby armchairs, telling her about the end of Mrs. Campbell’s attempt to turn her daughter into a competitive rider.
“So now you’re out of a job?” asked Tamara, when he had finished. She had been listening with what was, for her, unusual attention, and Ginny wondered if it was possible that the same idea that she had had earlier had come to Tamara. But it seemed unlikely.
Andras spread his hands expressively. “I am,” he agreed, and again Ginny saw that bleakness in his expression.
But all Tamara said was, “How uncomfortable for you!” and then she infuriatingly changed the subject. Ginny supposed that it had been rather too much to hope that Tamara and Andras might form some kind of partnership.